Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  “I hope you’re right. You know, the first night we were back from France I had a dream, a nightmare.” He grimaced, and rubbed his right temple, as though it ached him. “I don’t remember the details, only that it was awful. And that it had something to do with this feeling I have about the future of our country. The future’s like that nightmare, awful, but without the details.”

  She watched him, concerned, seeing the strain in his face more clearly than he had ever allowed it to show before.

  His glance took in the volume of Ramparts on the table beside his chair, and he reached out to rest a palm on it, saying, “This is what it’s all about. Paranoia. Paranoia on the left, shivering and twitching in this magazine. Paranoia on the right, forcing the magazine out of business. It was paranoia that hurt us so deeply in the fifties, and it’s paranoia again today.” He looked up at Evelyn and said, “Have you read that essay of Robert’s? Fuehrer from the Left?”

  “No. I guess he thought I wouldn’t be interested.”

  “He showed it to me a while ago, and it’s pernicious, and more so because he himself doesn’t realize what he’s saying. He’s simply representative of the climate of opinion without recognizing the implications of his ideas.”

  Evelyn said, “What are his ideas?”

  “The essay says that no liberal government can survive without becoming authoritarian and therefore tyrannical. That when extremism enters the political picture from either end of the spectrum, it must either win or be imitated by the elements that do win. And that extremism, meaning assassinations, repression, and so on, are now a part of our political picture. What the essay doesn’t say, but what is the inescapable conclusion whether it says so or not, is that there’s no longer hope for democracy, a dictatorship is coming from either the left or the right, it can’t be avoided, the only thing to do is fold our hands and wait for it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Robert,” she said.

  “I told you, he doesn’t say that. He says everything leading up to it, and stops. And denies the conclusion, if it’s pointed out to him.” Bradford waved a hand, saying, “You don’t have to defend Robert, I’ll agree with almost anything you say. But the point is, there’s a climate of opinion in this country, a fatalism waiting for an end to freedom, and when even an intelligent man like Robert can be subsumed by it, the outlook is becoming desperate.”

  “You mean he might be right, after all.”

  “The self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, that’s exactly what I mean. And it’s fear that’s behind the whole growing mood of exhaustion and despair. Fear of everything, and since Vietnam even the fear of responsibility. How nice not to have to make any more decisions.”

  “Then what can be done?”

  “We can try to find the root of the fear,” he said. “We can try to trace the threads of paranoia back to their origin. And it seems to me that all our domestic fears, of blacks and of Communists and of right-wing extremists and all the rest of it, are being blown up out of proportion because they’re being fed by our global fears. And that most of the global fears everywhere, not just in this country but all around the world, can be traced back to one source. Do you know where that is? Do you know where we’ll find the seat of unreasoning fear in the world today?”

  She shook her head.

  “China,” he said.

  She frowned, completely at a loss. He had seemed to be talking about something entirely different. China? What did China have to do with the shutting down of Ramparts, or Robert’s article, or a new wave of repression in the United States?

  But Bradford was nodding, saying, “Yes, it’s China. Communist China is terrified of everybody in the world. As the most recently industrialized superpower, she is terrified of the older and still stronger superpowers around her. She is afraid that weaker but more sophisticated nations will take advantage of her. She is afraid of everything and everybody, and the threads of China’s fear stretch out and make everybody else fearful, too. If it weren’t for China’s fear, the United States and the Soviet Union would have attained a true and viable rapprochement by now, because it’s inevitable. But the Soviets are afraid to show weakness toward the West to their Chinese allies, and the United States is afraid of Russia because China is her ally, and the barriers stay up between the nations. And because the barriers are up between the nations, the internal barriers stay up within the nations. And once again freedom becomes a luxury we fear we cannot afford.”

  “Well,” she said, “if the source of all the trouble lies outside the United States, there’s nothing we can do at all.”

  “Perhaps there is,” he said. He looked away from her, leftward at the bookcases. “Do you remember when the Chinese came here two months ago, to give me Kwong Lan Quey’s suicide note?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “They also gave me to know that they would be interested in keeping the lines of communication open, if I was willing.” He smiled crookedly at the bookcases. “Since it was their own man who had turned out to be faithless in that Paris meeting, it put me in the unusual position of being a Westerner they felt might be trusted.”

  “You’ve kept in touch with them?”

  “I have.” He looked back at Evelyn, smiling more broadly. “Undercover, I’m afraid. It’s all been very Foreign Intrigue, with me slipping letters to them and them slipping letters to me.”

  “But why? Why do it that way?”

  “The paranoia I’ve been talking about. I wanted to be sure I would remain an independent citizen, that I would not be turned into a government spokesman despite myself. So I’ve kept our watchdogs, and everybody else, from knowing about it.”

  “And?”

  “They want me to come to China.”

  “Come—? You mean, take a trip to China?”

  “Yes. Their trust for me has grown, I think, and they want me to come for high-level talks. Completely unofficial, not as a representative of my government, but simply as one of the few, the very few, well-known and responsible Westerners whom they think they can trust and believe.”

  “And you want to go,” she said.

  “Of course. Would any man not want to go, any man sincere in his desire for peace in the world? Because peace in the world, true peace, is the clue to everything. End the need for this permanent military stance, and America will revert with joy to its original concepts of individual liberty and individual responsibility.”

  “But—” Her mind was whirling, she was no longer sure what was what. “Do you think the government would let you go? And what if the Chinese kidnapped you, what if they wouldn’t let you come back?”

  “There, you see?” He pointed at her, grinning. “Paranoia again. Why should Red China, or any other country in the world, kidnap a seventy-one-year-old retired fuddy-duddy? What good would it do them? You didn’t think the French would kidnap me back in June, and we have at least as many differences with the French as we have with the Chinese, so why should you believe the Chinese would do anything so pointless?”

  “All right. But what about our government?”

  He sobered immediately, saying, “That’s the problem, of course.”

  “Have you talked to anybody yet?”

  “No. And I’m not going to. Because I know what they’d say.”

  “They won’t let you.”

  “That’s right. You remember how much trouble I had, getting them to let me meet a Chinese in Europe. And even then it was so hedged with conditions—” He shook his head, saying, “No, there’s no point in talking with anybody in Washington. And you see what that means, don’t you?”

  “That’s impossible, too,” she said. “But that’s such a shame, because you might be—”

  “But it isn’t impossible,” he said. “Any more than the private correspondence is impossible. I’ve been doing it.”

  She frowned at him, not sure she could possibly be understanding his meaning. “But you couldn’t sneak away,” she said.

  “W
hy not?”

  “Well, in the first place, they’d know it right away, if you disappeared, and they’d find out. They’d stop you from going, if they could, and they’d be very angry with you when you came back, if they didn’t manage to stop you.”

  “I know that,” he said. “And I believe it’s a risk worth taking. It’s possible I would never be able to come back, not in the few years I may have left to me. I’ve considered that for quite some time.”

  “You mean, stay there? Forever?”

  “If necessary.”

  “But you’re talking about defecting!”

  “Not at all! I’m talking about a peace mission, I’m talking about a private individual making a voyage into the very eye of the storm of paranoia that threatens us all.”

  “But if you’re going to sneak away, against the government’s wishes, if you’re going to have to stay in Communist China for the rest of your life—”

  “It’s a sacrifice worth making, if I can bring about world peace.”

  Evelyn stared at Bradford, trying to understand him, trying to find the words to say to him, and it seemed to her his expression was suddenly colder, more impersonal—somehow, more messianic—than she’d ever seen it before. She said, “But people will think you’ve defected, they’ll say you’ve defected, so what good could it do?”

  “I’ll get the public eye,” Bradford said. “Once I’ve made the move, once I’m actually in Red China, I’ll have the whole world’s eye. The drama of the situation alone will assure that. There won’t be anything like that interview with George any more, they won’t be able to ignore me.”

  “Bradford—I don’t know, I just don’t know what to say.”

  “Because the idea is new to you. When it was new to me, I too was afraid of it. But think about it, think what it would really mean. And think about the title I’ve chosen for it. The Final Glory. Because that’s what it would be, you know, an accomplishment to dwarf everything I’ve ever done in my life. If my efforts could result in world peace, that would be a bequest to leave my posterity. And the Albert J. Rutherfords would think twice about Bradford Lockridge being nothing in his life but a politician. You know, there was one sentence in his review that fit right in with my thinking. He said, ‘The moments in life when something more than political skill is needed are rare, but they are critical.’ And he was absolutely right. And I’m at such a moment right now.”

  “I don’t know, Bradford. I have to think about this.”

  “Yes, you do, Evelyn. Because I have one more thing to say, and I want you to think very very carefully before you give me your answer.”

  She felt she was braced for anything, but how could she be sure? What else would he say, what else was left?

  He said, “If you will agree to, I want very much for you to come with me.”

  The Closing Door

  1

  ROBERT STEPPED OUT ON his bare front porch shortly after noon to check the mailbox, and found, amid the bills and supermarket circulars, a letter from the Japs (nickname of The Journal of American Political Studies), the quarterly to whom he’d sent Fuehrer from the Left. Stuffing the rest of the mail back into the box to get it out of the way, he slit open the envelope and leaned against the porch railing to read:

  Dear Mr. Pratt:

  Your Fuehrer created something of a furor here, as you no doubt anticipated it would. Scratch an intellectual these days and you will find an unreconstructed McCarthy man underneath nine times out of ten. Most of us, in fact, still speak privately of a kind of Second Coming, into which your quiet pebble of theory dropped like an avalanche.

  Needless to say, there is a great division of opinion concerning your ideas, but we were all agreed that they deserve publication. In fact, we are all interested to see how they will hold up once the intellectual community gets its teeth into them.

  Currently, we plan to schedule Fuehrer from the Left for our Spring issue, and should be sending you copies by the first of February. All dependent, of course, on printer’s schedules, etc.

  Please sign both copies of the enclosed release form and send them to me in the envelope provided.

  We would be most interested to see further thoughts from you on this or related subjects.

  Yours sincerely,

  Walter W. Brownlow

  Editor-in-Chief

  The Journal of American Political Studies

  Robert smiled as he read the letter, but his smile was a bit grim. Writing on contemporary political manifestations was not going to be exactly as quiet and placid an occupation as, say, doing pieces on the war aims of Andrew Johnson, was it? No, it was not.

  He refolded the letter and its enclosures, reached to take the rest of the mail back out of the box, and heard a car pull to the curb out front. He turned, mildly curious, and was surprised to see Evelyn’s dark green Mustang there, and Evelyn herself getting out of the car and coming up the walk toward him.

  “Hello!” he called, coming to the head of the stoop to greet her, smiling because he assumed (after yesterday) that her reason for coming here would have something to do with bed.

  But one look at her expression as she came up the steps told him he was wrong. “I had to talk to you,” she said. “There was nobody else I could turn to.”

  His hands were encumbered by mail. “Well, sure,” he said. “Who else would you—of course you’ll come to me. Is it Bradford?”

  “Yes. Can we go inside? May I make you coffee?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said, gesturing vaguely with the handful of letters.

  She led the way, holding the door for him and then walking on directly to the kitchen while he paused to drop the mail on a chair in the living room. When he got to the kitchen she was already opening cabinet doors, assembling things for coffee. He said, “Evelyn? What is it?”

  She kept moving around the kitchen as she talked, saying, “I don’t even know how to say it. It sounds so stupid, it sounds ridiculous.” She stopped and turned to look at him. “I don’t know if it’s really serious or not,” she said. “All I know is, it scares me.”

  “What scares you?”

  She hesitated, as though looking for the words, and then shrugged and said, with an odd flatness in her voice, “Bradford says he wants to go to Red China.”

  “Red China? Travel all the way—”

  “That isn’t the point,” she said, and in the sudden harshness in her voice he first realized just how close she was to the edge. “Travel isn’t the thing,” she said, “he can stand to travel. But he’d have to—this sounds so silly, saying it this way—he’d have to sneak away, that’s the thing. They wouldn’t let him go, if they knew, our government wouldn’t.”

  “Wait a second,” Robert said. “I’m not following this. How could Bradford Lockridge sneak out of the United States? He couldn’t do it.”

  “Whether it’s possible or not,” she said desperately, “he wants to do it. Don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, this is too fast for me.”

  Not answering him, following her own train of thought, she said, “Besides, it is possible. The Chinese will help him.”

  “Evelyn,” he said, “you better sit down for a minute. Let me make the coffee, you sit and organize yourself.”

  “I just don’t know what to do,” she said helplessly. “Is it his mind? Or is it just nonsense, and he’ll forget about it in a day or two? Or maybe he’s right, maybe he knows best after all.”

  Robert took her by both forearms and walked her backward till her legs hit a kitchen chair. “Sit down,” he said, and she obediently dropped into the chair. He released her and said, “Don’t talk. Let me make coffee, and you just sit and think for a couple of minutes. Now, don’t say anything, you can take two minutes to get yourself together, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Robert,” she said, frowning up at him, “I just don’t know what to do, I feel as though I should do something but I don’t know what.”

/>   “Sit there,” he said. He cupped a palm against her cheek and said, “We’ll decide what to do, don’t worry. In a minute.”

  She hesitated, and then nodded. “All right,” she said, doubtful but obedient, and reached up to pat the hand he was holding to her cheek, almost as though she were reassuring him.

  He made instant coffee, deciding that time was more important than taste right now, and while waiting for the water to boil he glanced at her, and she seemed totally self-absorbed. She had one forearm resting on the table and was frowning at her hand, studying the spread-out fingers.

  When the coffee was ready, he carried the cups over to the table, sat down beside her, gave her a smile that was meant to be encouraging, and said, “Are you all right now?

  “I think so,” she said, and briefly returned the smile. “You’re right, I wasn’t making any sense before.” She reached for the coffee cup.

  Robert waited, watching her.

  Evelyn sipped coffee, put the cup down, and leaned over the table to gaze moodily down into the cup. In that position she said, narratively, “Bradford told me last night that he intends to go to Red China, to live there permanently. He says he can do something to bring about world peace if he goes there, he has a whole involved theory about it, I didn’t really understand what he was talking about.” She glanced at Robert, and back down at the coffee. “He was telling me because he wants me to go with him.”

  “With him?”

  “He’s been in secret communication with the Chinese,” she said, “ever since that time there was the fuss at the gate.” She glanced up at him. “Remember?”

  “Two Chinese in the back of a limousine,” he said. “I remember. What do you mean, secret communication? Secret from our government?”

  “Yes. That’s what he told me.”

  “And now he wants to defect to China?”